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Personal Income Falls in October 2013

Real Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) was up whilst Real Disposable Personal Income (DPI) was down. You get the feeling from this release that the consumer went on a spending spree without the income to pay for it.

The market looks at current values (not real inflation adjusted) and was expecting a PCE (expenditures) rise of 0.3% (versus 0.3% actual), and a rise in DPI (income) of 0.3% to 0.5% (versus -0.2% actual). In other words, expenditures were at expectations whilst income was well under expectations.

The monthly fluctuations are confusing. Looking at the 3 month trend rate of growth, income trend is relatively flat, whilst expenditures are trending up.

Real Personal Income is up 1.8% year-over-year, and real personal expenditures are up 2.1% year-over-year. The gap between income and expenditures opened up again this month.

this data is very noisy and as usual includes backward revision (detailed below) making real time analysis problematic – and the backward revisions this month are moderate.

Earlier this week, the second estimate of 3Q2013 GDP indicated the economy was growing at 3.6%.

The savings rate continues to be low, and declined marginally this month.

The inflation adjusted income and consumption are “chained”, and headline GDP is inflation adjusted. This means the impact to GDP is best understood by looking at the chained numbers. Econintersect believes year-over-year trends are very revealing in understanding economic dynamics.

Per capita inflation adjusted expenditure has exceeded the pre-recession peak.

Seasonally and Inflation Adjusted Expenditure Per Capita

Per capita inflation adjusted income is above pre-recession levels.

Seasonally and Inflation Adjusted Income Per Capita

Backward revisions this month:

Estimates for personal income and DPI have been revised for April through September; estimates for PCE have been revised for July through September. Changes in personal income, in current-dollar and chained (2009) dollar DPI, and in current-dollar and chained (2009) dollar PCE for August and September — revised and as published in last month’s release — are shown below.

Estimates of wages and salaries were revised from April through September. The revision to second-quarter wages and salaries reflect the incorporation of the most recently available BLS tabulations of the second-quarter wages and salaries from the quarterly census of employment and wages. Revised estimates for July, August, and September reflect extrapolations from the revised second-quarter level of wages. In addition, revisions to August and September reflect revised BLS employment, hours, and earnings data for those months.

The graph below illustrates the relationship between income (DPI) and expenditures (PCE) – showing clearly income and expenditures grow at nearly the same rate over time. This month income which had caught up with expenditures, fell behind again.

The long term trend is that the consumer is spending more of its income – but the 2013 trend is that the consumer is spending less of its income.

Seasonally Adjusted Spending’s Ratio to Income (a declining ratio means consumer is spending less of its Income)

PCE is the spending of consumers. In the USA, the consumer is the economy. Likewise, personal income is the money consumers earn to spend. Even though most analysts concentrate on personal expenditures because GDP is based on spending, increases in personal income allow consumers the option to spend more.

There is a general correlation of PCE to GDP (PCE is a component of GDP). PCE is a fairly noisy index and subject at times to significant backward revision (see caveats below).

The savings rate has been bouncing around – but the general trend is down. In an economy driven by consumers, a higher savings rate does not bode well for increased GDP. This is one reason GDP may not be a good single metric of economic activity. The question remains what is the optimal savings rate for the current demographics. It might be expected that as people near retirement, the savings rate rises and after people retire, savings rate falls. Econintersect is not aware of any study which documents this effect. The graph below is from BEA table 2.6. – and shows a significant fall in savings rate for January 2013 – and now a recovery is continuing. The savings rate is now 4.8% – now down two months in a row

Personal Savings as a Percentage of Disposable Personal Income

And one look at the different price changes seen by the BEA in this PCE release versus the BEA’s GDP and BLS’s Consumer Price Index (CPI). We should note that the inflation adjustment is for PCE and Personal Income is lower than the ones used for GDP and CPI.

Finally for recession watchers, here is the graph below, here are the elements used to mark a recession. (1) personal income less transfer payments, in real terms and (2) employment. In addition, we refer to two indicators with coverage primarily of manufacturing and goods: (3) industrial production and (4) the volume of sales of the manufacturing and wholesale-retail sectors adjusted for price changes.

If a line falls below the 0 (black line) – that sector is contracting from the previous month. Personal income is the blue line. Note – the below graph uses multipliers to make movements more obvious (ignore the value of the scale, only consider whether the graph is above [good] or below [bad] the zero line).

Caveats on the Use of Personal Income and Consumption Expenditure Data

PCE is a fairly noisy index and subject at times to significant backward revision. This index cannot be relied upon in real time.

This personal income and personal consumption expenditure data by itself is not a good tool to warn of an upcoming recession. Econintersecthas shown that PCE is a distraction for recession watchers, with moves over a few months having a 30% accuracy of indicating a recession start, and a 70% incidence of indicating a non-recessionary event. The graph below shows the lack of correlation. Note, however, that PCE does have prolonged declines over many months associated with recessions but these long declines are not very good in “predicting” a recession until it is already underway.

Readers are warned that this article is based on seasonally adjusted data. Monthly non-adjusted data is available with a delay of several months.

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